Colour Mixing

When the students are painting, they are often exploring what happens when they mix colours. I decided to extend their interest in colour mixing by providing more colour mixing experiences.

The first activity I provided was an experiment. I filled jars with red water, yellow water and blue water. I placed empty jars in between the jars of coloured water. I put pieces of paper towel from the jars of  red and blue coloured water into an empty jar, from the jars of red and yellow coloured water into an empty jar and from the jars of yellow and blue coloured water into an empty jar. We were all amazed how the coloured water travelled through the paper towels into the empty jars and created new secondary coloured water. When the experiment was over, all of the jars had equal amounts of coloured water.

I read different stories about primary colours and secondary colours including Mouse Paint and Mix It Up. 

At the Sensory Bin, the students were provided with cups of coloured water, eye droppers and small empty clear cups. They had the opportunity to mix the coloured water to make secondary colours. The students also created different coloured water beads by putting ice cubes of two different primary colours in a container with clear water beads.

At the Production Centre:

• The students created their own Mouse Paint books. 
• The students had the opportunity to mix the primary paint colours (red, blue, yellow) to make secondary colours (orange, purple, green) and then paint with their newly created colours. Some students also explored colour mixing with white paint and created different shades of colours.
• The students created tops with two primary colours and explored what happened when they spinned the top.

At the Light Centre,

•  The students experimented with placing transparent plastic objects of the three primary colours on top of each other.